Introduction

The Raspberry Pi and other small single-board computers are quite famous platforms for openHAB. However, setting up a fully working Linux system with all recommended packages and openHAB recommendations is a boring task taking quite some time and Linux newcomers shouldn’t worry about these technical details.

A home automation enthusiast doesn’t have to be a Linux enthusiast!

openHABian aims to provide a self-configuring system specific to the needs of every openHAB user.
Ready to install images are available for the Raspberry Pi and the Pine A64. openHABian can also be used on existing Debian based Linux systems. Follow the links below to learn more:

And I just spent a week setting up a Pi, OpenHab2 (failing), erasing it all, setting up OpenHab1, Habmin, and finally getting both the MiOS (Vera3), and Z-Wave (Aeon Labs ZStick Gen 5) bundles working.

I hope this works out well, I’m not willing to take the plunge and mess up the umpteen hours of research and pulling my hair out, but for those like me that this is their first foray into linux this could be fantastic!

Soon to come: Additional interactive options, first will be homegear and zsh. Please let me know which tools you would like to see preinstalled or as optional components! The goal should be to have a stable preconfigured openHAB 2 Raspbian installation packed with options but still transparent and open for user-specific needs.

The currently available release is still up-to-date as the setup script is downloaded live as well now.

that comes handy, cause my sdcard crashed while we were on vacation
Of course I have no complete backup image

Will try openHABian for setting up a new installation.

Regarding usefull packages and because you mentioned “screen”:
I would vote for “tmux” instead or in addition to screen. Works like a charm, has additional cool features and is ways easier to configure.

I have fixed a few more details yesterday. Optional components are not part of the image yet but everything else is at a point where it can be used by everybody. I have uploaded an image including the latest changes.
I will be on a short vacation for the rest of the week and will start working on optional components (Homegear, Grafana, Logstash) after that. Let me know what else you would like to see

@peter_juenger do you know byobu? There are so many different tools and screen is, I would say, the most common. It would not hurt to have one more package, on the other side I’m trying to provide a useful but not bloated image. There is already vim vs nano and mc vs vfu and till now I refrained from installing my beloved ZSH to not confuse users (but I’ll soon, everyone should use ZSH ;P).
Out of personal interest, why would you prefer tmux? I never tried it and “s-c-r-e-e-n” is already saved in my muscle memory

OT about screen: Never heared about byobu. I gave screen two or three tries over the last ten years. Always ended up in a mess. From my point of view it was ugly to configure and to use (shortcuts not easy to remember and not logical, old cruft …)

I then gave up to use a terminal multiplexer for a long time. Last year I had the strong need for such thing again and I googled for an alternative to screen, which is actived developed and easy to set up, to configure and to use.
I ended up with tmux and didn’t regret it so far.

I’m autostarting some sessions at logon and I like the easy possibility to split the screen horizontaly or vertically.

I’m sure that everything also is possible with screen, but I’m convinced that it’s much more difficult than with tmux (at least for me)

Some things to point.
Installed as instructed with no previous configuration to copy. Accessing the http//::8080 return error (page not found). Then i did an update/upgrade (sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade) and the openhab2-offline package was updated.

Tried again accessing the http//::8080 and voila the page for selecting the UI.

Hi I have tried this but it hasn’t worked and wondered if anyone knew why? I have down loaded the file and extracted all of the files and put them on the sd card and have plugged the ethernet and the power in but I only get a solid Green and red light and there lights on the ethernet on my pi and router are not lit either. Thanks

One thing to note is that the /etc/openhab2/ which is supposed to hold the configuration is not updated at all although changes are made through the UI (paper UI). I have added 3 bindings but no file in this directory.

Hey guys,
please be aware that openHABian is “only” a preinstalled and preconfigured Raspbian with settings similar to what was documented here and here (by me). That’s why a few of your problems are not really related to openHABian.

Stephen_F:

2 . Could not copy over userdata directory, as I am not sure where it goes in this new structure.

This is indeed a small mistake I made. Other than with the platform independent zip file, the package repository installation divides your files up into different folders - as documented under file locations.
The folder you are looking for is /var/lib/openhab2. You can copy your files over by the help of the ssh console or you can create an additional share via samba. I have done that to openHABian just now. Thanks for pointing out this detail
In your installation, just copy these lines into /etc/samba/smb.conf

This is how it should be. The root account is disabled by default on many Linux distributions nowadays. This is done in favor of the less risky possibility to use sudo. When you type su, you are asking your system to switch to the root account which is answered by a prompt for the root password. The root password is not “raspberry”, there is no root password, that’s why su fails with an authentication error You should use sudo on a per-command basis or if you really know what you are doing and you want a root console, use sudo su.

5 . Accessing the gui 192.168.1.xxx:8080 not responding - do I first need to install the autostart script?

The instructions were not joking: “Connect to the openHAB 2 portal (available after another 15 minutes)”. The first start takes some time but the portal will pop up eventually, believe me. This is not related to openHABian.

alekons:

Accessing the http//::8080 return error (page not found).

Same as above: “page not found” can be seen after around 10 minutes. Just have a little patience and give it 5 more minutes

jsn:

I have down loaded the file and extracted all of the files and put them on the sd card

Something went totally wrong here Please go to openhabian/releases and download the newest openhabian-ua-netinst-....img. This file needs to be flashed to your SD card as with every other RaspberryPi image. Good luck!

alekons:

One thing to note is that the /etc/openhab2/ which is supposed to hold the configuration is not updated at all although changes are made through the UI (paper UI).

This is a key functionality of openHAB 2 and PaperUI. PaperUI uses a database (in the userdata folder) to store settings. The etc folder allows to manually configure a system through files. Settings between these two worlds are NOT synced! There are multiple threads on this topic here in the forum.

@Stephen_F Thanks for pointing that out. I have updated the install script but it’s not working just now. I’ll have to look into that at the beginning of next week.
Till then, please execute the following commands to switch over:

I have done some further small changes. Installing java via the webupd8team repository is sadly accompanied by some problems (the installation chroot environment is a bit restricted). I have reverted the changes for now.
You only need the newer java revision if you want to use the my.openhab service. In this case, please just execute the above commands.
Everyone else is perfectly fine with the raspbian provided revision installed currently!